I enjoyed this. I'm a sucker for man vs nature and working-together-to-survive books, and this delivered.
I did find a lot of things hard to believe. [MINOR SPOILER ALERT] One of the major ones was the issue with directions. It's like day 8 or something. They're intelligent, with some outdoorsmanship between them, and they've had several days with at least partial sun, and they're all like "I wish we had a compass to figure out which direction is which." And I'm thinking, um…look at the sun! No, it won't give you an exact direction, and a lot depends on the season, latitude, etc., but if all you want is—for example—to head eastward to eventually run into a road or something, the sun will give you a pretty good clue. But none of them even think about that? And the solution they eventually come up isn't hugely more accurate, so why on Earth does one character keep asking the makeshift compass holder if they are still going east, when I get the distinct impression the compass holder is actually leading them south? Can't the others tell, more or less, if they're going generally in the right direction or not? This was a major plot point, so it really bothered me. [END SPOILERS]
A lot of other things stretched believability (the cliff thing, the wolves, etc), and the characterization could have been a little deeper, but it was a fun read, a good adventure, with the situation getting worse and worse. The writing was smooth.
[SEMI SPOILER ALERT]
And I liked the way it didn't go all fantasy but stayed grounded. [END SPOILERS]
Recommended for people who don't mind a bit of unbelievability in their survival stories.
Oh...and I like the author's name. :)
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